July 2007

You know some­one like Martha. Per­haps you are like her.

She’s the “host­ess with the mostest:” The most beau­ti­ful sil­ver, china and crys­tal, the ele­gantly let­tered place cards, the exquis­ite linens, the breath­tak­ingly gor­geous cen­ter­pieces, the gourmet food that tastes like noth­ing you’ve ever expe­ri­enced before.

When she plans a din­ner party, the prepa­ra­tions begin weeks or even months in advance. There is usu­ally a theme and, of course, color scheme. She spends what seems like an eter­nity set­ting the table, mak­ing sure every­thing is in pre­cisely the right spot before going back to the kitchen to assure that the food prepa­ra­tion is pro­gress­ing flawlessly.

“Rely­ing on God has to begin all over again every day as if noth­ing yet had been done.“
~ C.S. Lewis ~

When I first read this quote, it did not res­onate with me. The sec­ond por­tion of the sen­tence, “as if noth­ing yet had been done,” is what both­ered me.

“What do you mean, ‘as if noth­ing yet had been done’?” I found myself ask­ing the com­puter screen. “What about all of my hard work up to this point? What about my accom­plish­ments? What about my spir­i­tual growth? I’m not the same spir­i­tu­ally imma­ture per­son I was yes­ter­day or the day before or last month or last year or … ”

And as I walked around think­ing about the quote for a cou­ple of days, the bril­liance of its sim­plic­ity began to come into focus.